Re: poll results

matt979 <*no_reply_at_yahoogroups.com*> · Fri, 21 Feb 2003 22:11:28 -0000

Jon's response here is actually relevant to people's criticisms of 
Penn Bowl.  (As always I speak solely for myself and not for NAQT, 
Boston U. alumni, or any other relevant group you could think of.)

--- In quizbowl_at_yahoogroups.com, joncoochbu <no_reply_at_y...> wrote:
> Rather than dissect, I'd like to thank whomever made the above 
> review. Not because they took time out to bitch about someone who 
> graduated a year ago, or because we consistently spent a good 
portion 
> of our year holding tournaments so others had somewhere to play, 
but 
> because we on BUCB enjoyed spending their money, money we clearly 
> didn't deserve.

This is an excellent tongue-in-cheek response, in my opinion the best 
possible response to that particular criticism.  It also brings up a 
point that made me deeply unsympathetic to Samer's defense of himself.

Boston University's tournaments were probably mildly profitable.  
Penn Bowl, on the other hand, gets much higher gross revenue, a boon  
to whoever the money goes to.  (I have no idea what its expenses are 
like or even whether or how Samer is compensated for his time; 
perhaps his self-pity about his opportunity cost is well-founded.)

When a tournament pulls in that much money, I think it's more than 
fair to hold it to a much higher standard.  Why, after all, 
would/should so many teams bother to go to it?  Inertia?  The 
circular reasoning that everyone goes to it because everyone goes to 
it?  Fleeting memories of some especially well-run earlier Penn Bowls 
that by now were eight or nine years ago? :-)

(I'd really bitter around the time of one or two post-Matthews, pre-
Ismail Penn Bowls that in my opinion were deeply disappointing; I 
imagine Samer's have improved greatly on those.)

To some extent running Penn Bowl or editing Penn Bowl questions is a 
privilege.  It's also an incredible burden, obviously (one that I 
wouldn't want; a few years ago I'd have jumped at the chance but I'd 
have been terrible at it), but my intuition is that this isn't 
*quite* a situation where Samer is singlehandedly keeping an 
institution going.  Maybe I'm wrong about that, or maybe I'm 
overvaluing the legacy that old-school Penn Bowls set up.

Matt

P.S. Having just savaged him, I do have to defend Samer strongly one 
one point: At least in my (internal) NAQT experiences, he is an 
extremely good editor.  It's really kind of a shame: None of the NAQT 
editors get any credit from the outside world because you really 
don't know who contributed what. (Notionally that should also be true 
of NAQT writers, but...)  In any case, I think R. (and before his 
hiatus, Hillemann) has done significantly more -- and significantly 
better -- editing than anyone outside of NAQT would ever really grasp.